Black Nail Polish And A Little Eyeliner
by Rogha
Summary: Vampire!AU. What happened in a dark alley in the middle of the night should stay in a dark alley in the middle of the night. Otherwise you ended up traipsing around with a collection of the most useless supernatural beings to ever roam the Earth while on a vengeance quest.


**Okay, so this is for reverb 2017, and honestly this was a good fucking time - I never thought I'd write vampire stuff again, yet here I am. Never say never kids, "Vampire And Friends" is now my most visited genre probably. I was so lucky to be partnered with Peregrine, and Lunar Resonance who wrote another fic based on the same prompts and art that I'm looking forward to reading! I'm looking forward to reading a lot of reverbs, now that I'm not stresing over mine.**

 **I'm very competitive...**

 **And I have to thank Makapedia and Marsh Of Sleep, who both put up with my panicking over my fic and were very gentle with my poor, fragile ego while beta'ing. I'm sure they're super proud I even manged to ask them to read it.**

 **As always: Not okubo. Not today, friends.**

* * *

 **Black Nail Polish And A Little Eyeliner**

* * *

Maka was a strong, confident, independent young woman. She didn't need a man. She could handle herself in any situation.

Except for this one.

Because Maka was strong and confident and independent _and just a little bit drunk_ , she didn't think ' _maybe I'll take the long way home._ ' No, not her- it was three in the AM and she was going through her regular alley shortcut on the way home from the club. Even if an alley on a brightly lit afternoon was a pleasant shortcut and an alley in the middle of the night was a scary, dark place made of nightmares that you might get jumped in.

So she went through the alley of nightmares and consequently, here she was held up against the wall. Not by the throat, which would've sucked, but more like she was pinned against the wall by the hand against her clavicle, which was huge. Also like, freakishly strong. His arm was like a tree trunk. His legs were also like tree trunks, but tree trunks of older, fatter trees. Also like tree trunks, kicking them was hurting her toes and making no visible difference other than maybe mildly annoying him.

Like as if she was like a fly. Or a mosquito. Or like a bee when it's annoying you and you don't want to smack it because bees! They're so good for the whole world you need bees you can't smack the bee! Even though he's annoying, you can't smack him - he's doing a very important job.

But she wasn't a bee. She was a woman dangling in alley? She wasn't dangling by herself, either, someone was dangling her and it was starting to hurt and she was getting alley grime on her dress. That wasn't going to come out.

And then, to make everything the worst, she got blood on it. _Blood._

 _The nerve of this guy._

Wrenching her head to the side like that and latching onto her neck like a tick. What a douchebag. Like really what was this? Transylvania in 1897? And he wasn't like a tidy eater either. Oh no, he was wasting blood left and right, getting it on her dress.

It was a total write off, even if she didn't die.

Wait, since when might she die? And why was she so chill about it? Like, objectively, she didn't want to die. Well, maybe a little bit, because Med School is hard and she's tired all the fucking time. Seriously, think of time, now think of all of it, and that's when she was tired.

Still, she didn't want to die. So why wasn't she like fighting back? It's probably blood loss, making her faint, alcohol impairing the seven hells outta her judgement and like maybe just a little bit of whatever drug was on this guy's teeth to make taking blood really easy. Like, she was fully kicking his ass a minute ago, and now she couldn't even, like, feel where her toes were definitely sore from his rock hard thighs.

She was pretty resigned to her fate, honestly, but like if she had to die in an alley she at least wanted to die with some defensive wounds. She knew that the people in the morgue judge how people died. She judged how people died all the time - no wonder the city ME said she should apply to the morgue.

So, like she should probably claw at him a bit, just for show. So her dead body wouldn't make her look like a total pushover. Maybe DNA evidence will trip him up. God, was this what her life was?

Was this what her death was? Defensive wounds for show? Wow.

She punched him across the face.

It's pretty feeble, what with major blood loss and trauma and her being drunk and feeling like after the dentist took out her wisdom teeth. But it did _something_ because there's an unpleasant tearing-ripping- _shredding_ feeling and she hit the ground hard.

 _Everything hurt._

"You stupid _bitch,"_ whispered whoever just drained far more blood than is healthy. She couldn't see too clearly, and everything sounded sort of far away, but she could hear something sizzle, like meat in a pan. "You stupid _fucking bitch."_

What a rude thing to say. She should punch him again just for that but he's very far away. Maybe gone.

She hoped he'd gone.

She didn't feel as airy as before - all the pain was throbbing back, her toes, the ache in her feet, the mangled remains of her neck, her back, her ass where she fell on it - she felt like a sack of rocks that got the crap kicked out of it.

She was heavy, like she had lead for bones, and moving at all felt like she was pulling herself apart at the seams, but he's gone now, and she wasn't spending the night in an alley.

* * *

When Maka woke up the next morning, she was really hoping that everything that happened was a really bad stress dream, or a hallucination or anything other than ' _someone attacked me and drank my blood and I was really chill about it'_ because honestly? That's embarrassing and her science would tell her - really implausible.

Well? Whatever happened, her entire body felt like it was made of bruises and pain. Everything ached and she didn't have to move if she didn't want to move because she's an adult.

She was also an adult who needed to do her laundry and take off the makeup she didn't last night, so even though she didn't have to get up and no one can actually make her get up, she was up and shuffling like the undead across to the bathroom to run a bath while she piled all the laundry onto the floor to sort it by colour.

Of course, the mirror was in the bathroom, and it didn't escape her notice that she looked like shit. Like death warmed up. Like if one of the cadavers they practised on lost a fight with something tall, dark and bloodthirsty in a dark alley.

Point being, she looked bad.

She was paler than her normal shade of 'I haven't seen natural light in weeks' as per the med student norm, the dark circles beneath her eyes might actually be bruises, which'd go nicely with the giant handprint shaped bruise across her clavicle, and the rest of her distinctly bruise speckled skin. She looked like she'd evolved to camouflage into dappled woodland light.

She grabbed the handsoap and started trying to work her mother's wedding ring off her bruised finger. Punching people while wearing jewellery was not as fun as it seemed. Her knuckles were scraped and bruised a shade of purple that made her wince at the thought of using her hands for anything in the next couple of days.

Her back seemed like it went three rounds with a cheese grater and there's a slightly concerning amount of mystery alley grime embedded in her wounds.

And her neck was fucked up in the weirdest of ways, in that it was not even slightly fucked up at all.

* * *

It'd been a week, and she mostly felt better - on the outside. Inside, she was a molotov cocktail of fucked up. It's like she was stuck between the first two stages of grief. Sure, she wanted to be angry about what happened, she wanted to recklessly endanger her life in pursuit of justice, but she just couldn't commit to her feelings.

Of course, it was probably the fact that in order to be angry at what happened, she'd have to believe that it did. And she didn't really want to try and believe that something attacked her in an alley that she had yet to cut through again and _drank her blood._

It was an episode of Criminal Minds that did it, one from seasons ago that's not too scary that watching it while she's home alone in the middle of the night would make her go to sleep clutching her softball bat.

In it, the murderer had a fixation with blood - she was manipulated by a man to murder a couple of people, whose blood she drained. Then drank. The poor girl thought she was a vampire - what kind of idiot… She was severely mentally ill and manipulated. Maka shouldn't judge.

But, she _murdered_ people.

It was at this point in the train of thought that Maka decided to remind herself: Not the point.

The Actual Point: Maka knew that Criminal Minds wouldn't lie to her about the nature of serial killers. There were people out there who were obsessed with blood, and she was going to find them.

And kick that shit right out of them because dudes what the fuck.

But first she was going to watch as many episodes of Criminal Minds as she could get her hands on. She wasn't going to learn how to profile blood drinking serial killers by herself.

* * *

He wasn't the kind of guy that would normally grab Maka's attention, in that he was a guy and Maka had spent the last decade or so ignoring men so completely it'd become involuntary. She really had to work in order to notice guys at all.

But she did notice him, because he was sitting at the end of the bar alone, glaring at the pianist like he was the cause of every personal grievance in his life. Maka didn't know him or the pianist, so she couldn't say for sure that the pianist wasn't the cause of all the guy's woes, to be fair.

There was one thing she was sure of though. Whatever way he thought he was looking around discretely to check if no one was watching, he clearly wasn't seeing anything, because Maka could see him as clear as she could see anything across a crowded, dimly lit room - that was to say, not like, _really well_ but obviously better than that guy apparently expected.

Maka kind of wanted to march over there and google the word 'subtlety' for him, because he evidently had no fucking clue what it means. And how could she tell that? Because the next thing he did, without trying to hide it or anything, was tip a measure from a hip flask into whatever girly cocktail he was drinking. Like first he didn't see when he looked, and then he was brazen as all hell when it came to pouring contraband red liquor into his pink cocktail.

The liquid didn't quite mix or disperse the what he wanted it to so he stirred it aggressively with his fancy girly cocktail straw before taking a long, satisfying sip of _holy shit that was blood._

 _Her blood._

(Unless there was more than one person attacked in an alley for their blood in the past week and a half. Which seemed unlikely, although, granted, not impossible.)

Not the whole cocktail, obviously, the stuff in his hip flask.

Maybe the whole cocktail. She'd never been to this bar before, and she'd ordered a beer. What did she know? Only one thing - she was going to kick his ass for what he did to her.

* * *

"What do you mean it wasn't you!?" Maka yelled, fists up, ready to punch him if he displayed anything other than that fear for his goddamn life. "Who the fuck was it then?"

He flinched, already pressed against the outside wall of the bar. Maka had dragged him out the back door under the pretense of implied sexual favours, despite his having protested heavily. He didn't look too surprised that no sexual favours appeared forthcoming, but his eyes darted around looking for an exit strategy.

His hair was a bright white colour against the the grimy wall, and his eyes were a French wine burgundy. He should've looked like the stuff of nightmares, but instead he looked like a kid so used to being picked on that he decided to protect his face so his mom didn't find out.

"I don't know- it wasn't me- I don't- that's not how I roll," he started, words stumbling over each other in a race to be first out of his mouth. "It's not like-"

"Well, whose blood were you drinking? What makes you so sure you don't deserve to get your ass kicked? You were still drinking blood!"

"I was, yeah but - "

He dropped like a rock when Maka punched him. In the face.

What? If he didn't want to get punched in the face he shouldn't drink blood and make it so obvious that he didn't want to get punched in the face.

* * *

Normally Maka's mantra would be you either do something right or you do it not at all. So she knew that he should really be tied to a chair in a derelict building with a single bare bulb swinging overhead, dimly illuminating the surrounding squalor.

However, she'd already technically kidnapped him by pretending he was too drunk to walk and taking him to her home, in a taxi, so yeah, he'll just have to settle for her tidy, brightly lit pastel kitchen instead. She'd also tied him to the chair with the skipping rope her boxing instructor handed her to use at home.

She's not sure that this was what he meant.

Youtube was very instructive when it came to tying people to chairs, in case anyone was wondering.

So, now she just had to wait for him to wake up.

Which didn't seem like it was happening anytime soon, so she might as well make some dinner.

* * *

Maka didn't like to stereotype people, but she would say that it was typical that he woke up just as she was sitting down to eat her fairly delectable dinner of stuffed sweet potatoes.

Of course he did.

And it wasn't like she made enough to _share._

What's the etiquette in this situation? If she split it, there wouldn't be enough for either of them, but if she ate it in front of him, like, that was a dick move.

Of course, she could just ignore it, leave it on the table and question him and eat it later.

But.

 _Then it'd get cold._ There was melted cheese on it. Cheese never reheated the same way. It was like refreezing completely melted ice-cream. You might as well just throw it away- it was ruined forever now.

"Are you going to eat that?" Her hostage- _prisoner_ \- hostages are leverage to get to a third party, prisoners are held for themselves - asked.

"Uh," Maka said, eloquently. "Yes?"

"It looks good."

"Do you - do you want some?"

"Nah. I couldn't put you out like that." Her blood drinking prisoner was rather polite. "You go ahead, there's no point in wasting it. I'm not going anywhere."

Maka sat down to eat, a little bit relieved that he wasn't making a big deal over it. She was hungry, so what? It wasn't like she didn't offer him any.

"Besides," he added, "you know - _garlic."_

"Oh my god."

* * *

Maka was just sitting down with her homemade ice-cream sundae when the door exploded inwards and a small blue haired man dived in, rolling when he hit the floor and striking a pose when he rose again.

Maka had to admit, it was impressive, but he'd better be willing to pay up for the door. And the frame. Just, damages, in general.

"Oh, hey Black Star - what are you doing here?"

"I'm here to kick your _ass!"_ The small blue man pointed at aggressively at… holy shit. Maka hadn't even gotten his name. He'd been here for _hours._ This was so awkward. "If anyone's gonna kill this wannabe Tokio Hotel loser, it's gonna be _me, the ALL POWERFUL BLACK STAR!"_

He postured for a minute, before he noticed a crucial detail about the scene before him.

"Are those ice-cream sundaes!?"

"Yeah," Maka said, truthfully. "You want one?"

"Do I want one? _Do I want one?_ What kind of dumbass question is that? I would love an ice-cream sundae please." His legs buckled under him, so that he went from standing and looking moderately intimidating to low-key adorably sitting on the floor in zero-point-two seconds. He looked up at Maka hopefully.

She sighed and went to fix him a sundae.

"Dude -" She could hear her white haired prisoner hiss.

"Ow, dude, what the hell? I came to rescue you and this is how you repay me?" Maka couldn't say for sure, but she was pretty sure that her prisoner just kicked his would be rescuer.

"Dude, fix the door, or she'll be pissed."

"Oh, right yeah."

When Maka turned around to offer Black Star the sundae, the door was balancing carefully in the frame, held in place with some duct tape and demonic sigils written in magic marker.

"Yeah, so, this is, I'm so sorry, I didn't catch your name," said her prisoner - she had to stop calling him that, he wasn't even tied up anymore, just sitting at her table, eating an ice-cream sundae.

"Maka, I'm Maka Albarn. And you are?"

"Oh, I'm Soul Evans - anyway, Maka, this is Black Star, my asshole werewolf neighbour -"

 _Werewolf?_

"Your nemesis!" Black Star corrected.

"Right, sorry, my nemesis," Soul made soothing hand gestures in Black Star's direction. "Black Star, this Maka, she kidnapped me because she's out for vengeance against another vampire who assaulted her in an alley and I agreed to help her find him in exchange for my unlife and that of my friend's. Everyone up to speed?"

 _ **Vampire!?**_

He clapped, and everyone went back to eating ice-cream, albeit Maka with some trepidation.

* * *

Maka wasn't sure how she got into this situation, but she was walking into the belly of the beast in the hopes that they'd help her find a different beast.

And by belly of the best, she meant vampire lair.

And by vampire lair, she meant apartment in an okay-ish area of town.

Still, all his neighbours nodded at him, somewhat respectfully, if not fearfully, so Maka knew that Soul was considered important in the community. Maybe even dangerous.

She didn't know. Maybe it was just the kind of neighbourhood where you nodded at the people you saw everyday.

It was worrisome enough that he had neighbours who were out before the sun was out

The elevator in Soul's apartment building was "unreliable, except on days where the temperature exceeds 19 degrees Celsius", whatever that meant, and Maka made a note to google the conversion later.

Whatever it meant, it meant that Maka and Soul were slowly climbing up to the uppermost floor of the building, and it _also_ meant that when they got there, one of them was a little out of breath and it wasn't the one of them that needed air to live.

On the door, there was a gilded and highly ornate picture frame that had seen better days, and those better days were probably before the building was first erected. Written in faded but laboriously elegant script on yellow paper inside the frame was ' _Soul Evans and Montemorty Kidd.'_

"What kind of name is Montemorty?"

"Family name," Soul told her. "The name of his father before him, and his father before him, and his father before him, and his _mother_ before him, actually, and then her father before her…"

"I get it."

"Only reason there aren't more Montemortys around is because Kidd went and got himself made immortal," Soul said, engaged in a fierce battle with the lock. His weapon of choice? A single unwilling ally in the form of a slightly misshapen key.

"Really? Not because calling your child Monty-Morty is really dumb to begin with?"

"Yeah, well, that too. Just call him Kidd. He thinks that the practice of calling people by their Christian names is far and away too familiar." The lock finally clicks and Soul grinned triumphantly at her before ushering her into his secret vampire lair.

She congratulated him absently as she steps into the apartment. It was horrifyingly exactly what a vampire lair should look like, right down to the layers of cobwebs and dust, and two upright coffins leaning against the wall.

Even though Maka could hear the hum of electricity - a fridge, maybe - in the background, the room was glowing with candles on every surface, wax dripping in pools. The shelves were creaking under the weight of heavy leather-bound tomes.

An ornate chandelier hung over the centre piece of the room: a grand piano, lid closed and draped artfully with a heavy piece of red velvet fabric that fell in deep folds. It matched the red of the low, plump seats placed carefully in the room.

A gramophone in the corner was playing a creaky old tune, skipping and scratching in all the right places. The handle appeared to be cranking itself.

"Kidd, what the fuck," Soul flicked on the light switch next to the door, and the eerie room that had looked so creepy and lair-ish in the candlelight seemed a little less impressive in the harsh electric lighting.

"You said you were bringing a mortal-" a sharply dressed man emerged from a shadow. And Maka didn't mean he was hiding in shadow, or that the shadow was making it harder to see him or that he was generally lurking in a shadowy spot. She said emerged and she meant it. He was a part of the shadow, and then he wasn't, casually brushing the vestiges of wispy darkness off his lapels. "You said you wanted to impress her."

"Yeah, I meant like, do the dishes. Maybe dust a little. There's more dust now than there was when I left." Soul squinted at the heavy red velvet draped over the piano. "Are those my bed curtains?"

"They were the only ones we had that matched," Kidd defended, folding his arms defiantly.

"You'd better help me hang these back up." Soul gathered the draping fabric, the separate swaths of it more apparent now, in his arms. He coughed as clouds of dust rose.

"Fine." Kidd heaped the fabric unhelpfully onto Soul and steered him out of the room. Soul made a muffle sound of pain with Kidd shoved him absently into the doorframe. "Could I trouble you to keep an eye on the candles?"

"Don't talk to her," Soul said, sharply. "You haven't been introduced."

"That hardly matters." Maka heard them through the walls and, more probably, through the open door. Well, them and ominous clattering noises. "It's the twentieth century, one hardly need be introduced to form an acquaintance."

"It's the twenty-first century," Maka reminded them, before she remembered that their conversation was probably not intended to include her. She kept an eye on the candles as she read titles of the books, running her fingers along the spines. Some of them were burning pretty low.

She started blowing them out, feeling strangely as though this must be what the birthdays of century old vampires must be like.

* * *

The game plan was: Soul and Kidd - his 300 year old roommate, who, once again, just hung out as part of the shadows sometimes because he felt like it - were going to put out some feelers in the supernatural community to see if anyone knew anything about a rogue vampire who was attacking mostly innocent young women in dark alleyways when they were just minding their own business.

Feelers started with waiting for darkness to fall and going out onto the roof and yelling across at the neighbours.

Maka was already acquainted with one of them, as it turned out.

"Black Star!" Soul threw a handful of pebbles that skittered across the roof. "Black Star!"

The supernatural network was a nuanced and beautiful thing that didn't appear to know what social media was.

It took a minute, but Black Star and another, taller and infinitely more intimidating man appeared on the roof, hauling between them a plastic storage box - the kind you kept your high school memories in for years before you realised high school was the worst and you didn't even want these memories - filled with water balloons. They were taking great care not to jostle it, but a few balloons had already been lost in transit.

"I've been waiting all day for this!" Black Star yelled over. "I knew you'd come crawling out here to mine me for information, so Free filled these water balloons with holy water!"

"Shit - I didn't - fuck," the taller man, Free, had a eyebrow tattoo that Maka had to squint to make out. It said 'No Future,' a rather bleak sentiment.

"Wait, Free you did remember to fill them with holy water right?"

"Well, like, to be honest, it's possible that I went to the church up on Dame's Street and like maybe the queue for the holy water tap was really long-"

"Free, you're an immortal werewolf and you didn't want to wait in line? In case it took too long?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, that sounds reasonable - Free filled these water balloons with regular water! It won't rend your flesh or anything but you'll be wet and uncomfortable!"

"Nevermind that right now!" Maka yelled. "And don't you dare throw those over here."

"Oh, hey Maka, I didn't see you there. What's up?" Black Star turned to Free, and though she couldn't hear the conversation, she imagined it went something like this:

"That's the girl who gave me a sundae."

"The one who got attacked in an alley by a rogue bloodsucker?"

"Yeah, that too, I guess."

Whatever they said, Free turned and waved politely at her.

"I'm the Immortal Werewolf Free."

"Aren't all werewolves immortal?" Maka asked, before Soul could stop her.

"One day I won't just be immortal! I'll be god! Then you'll see!" Black Star started. "And I'll do it all on my own, I'm not going to steal some dumb eye just so I can live forever."

"An eye?"

"We are getting so far off the agenda here," Kidd muttered, massaging his temples. "Can you guys keep an ear out for any rogue vampire attacks?"

"I guess we can put the word out in the Full Moon Club - we can't promise we won't kill when we find him - "

"I'm the one who's going to kill him, you make sure everyone knows that!" Maka insisted, stamping her foot indignantly.

"There's an ancient rivalry between vampires and werewolves -"

"There's not really, that's just the media," Kidd told her quietly. "I don't know where they got that from, most vampires and werewolves get on as well as anyone."

"Really?"

"Oh, sure," Kidd said. "Black Star would fight his own shadow if he could."

It was at this point that Black Star launched himself across the gap between buildings to roll tackle Soul and punch him in the face a handful of times. Maka took her cue from Kidd and ignored it.

"I'll tell you if we hear anything - and I'll get Eruka to put the word out in her coven," Free raised his voice even further to be heard over the fighting. "They'll bring back something. Will it be anything more substantial than a prophetic dream? Maybe not."

"Thanks Free!"

"No problem!"

"Should we do something about that?" Maka asked, nodding at where Soul and Black Star were grappling on the floor. Black Star was definitely pushing the boundaries of a humanoid form, his nose sloping down into a snout and dense dark hair sprouting on his face and arms. His nails were shorter and stubbier, tipped with sharp claws that left deep scratches in everything they touched - the ground, clothes, Soul's face. Soul wasn't any better, his ears stretched to a huge, sound-catching membrane and his teeth were well out, sharp and dangerous and making Maka heart race and breath catch at the memory of how easily she'd been torn into like some kind of mixed berry flavoured juice pouch.

"Nah, Once Upon A Time is starting soon, and Black Star hates missing it," Kidd gestured for her to go past him, smoothly obscuring her view of the fight. "Let's go make some coffee, shall we?"

* * *

When Soul arrived back inside, his face was human shaped again and the violent puncture wounds were shiny pink scars that faded as Maka watched.

He took his coffee with three heaping spoons of sugar and an indiscreet dash of blood.

* * *

Sometimes the supernatural underbelly of your city was closer than you thought.

Sometimes it's in the alley near your home, and sometimes it's at the back entrance to the teaching hospital affiliated with your post-graduate med school education.

Well not so much as a back entrance as it was an emergency exit door on the side of the building that was propped open with a sodden file box filled with out of date mouldering magazines. The supernatural world was a series of near constant aesthetic disappointments.

It was just her and Soul this time- it was Kidd's turn to host book club.

A bizarrely greyscale man, hunched in a lab coat against the cold, was puffing on a cigarette and waiting for them. He looked like he'd been peeled apart and stitched back together more times than anyone could advise, scars and stitch marks winding around his body, a metal bolt pinning his head together. Despite this, Maka recognised him, sort of. From somewhere.

He stubbed out the cigarette in a the pot of a skeletal plant that had probably thrived once.

"Yo."

It couldn't be. It was impossible. The last time Maka saw him he was in full technicolor, skin smooth and flawless and ageless. Definitely minus the bolt.

"Doctor Stein?!"

"Oh, hey Maka, I see you joined the club," he held a cooler - the bag kind, not the hard plastic ones you use for beers - out to Soul, who grabbed it and fished in his pocket for a handful of crumpled cash. Stein didn't count it, just shoved it in his pocket. "Welcome to the seedy underbelly."

"Did you always - what happened to you?"

"Nothing at all happened to me, but something most certainly happened to you," Stein smirked, looking far too pleased about Maka's traumatic and life altering experience. Maka took a step back - he'd never, this new Stein flicked all her instincts to flight. He was different here, not the bored professor she knew at all.

"Easy." Soul's face was twisted again, out of shape and nightmareish. It gave him a lisp, which made it much less scary. He was in front of Maka, when did that happen? "She got bit by a rogue. Any of your clientele fall off the wagon?"

"None of mine, but I don't think this fellow was ever on the wagon," Stein leaned against the door. "Got a patient though, who might be of interest to you."

"Can we come in?"

"Just her - you know the rules," Stein turned to Maka. "He can't come in without an invitation from a human, and I don't qualify anyway."

"What are you?"

"Novel inspiration," Stein glanced at his watch. "Are you coming or not?"

"Maka, are you sure you'll be okay?" Soul asked, glancing at Stein like he couldn't trust him alone with his kidnapper.

"Yeah, I'll be fine," Maka said, stepping into the hospital. "Besides, why don't you come on in?"

Stein snorted behind her.

"I knew there was a reason I liked you."

* * *

Stein abandoned them outside a room, kicking away on a wheely chair to do important and nefarious medical procedures. Maka knocked politely on the door before pushing it open and going inside.

The woman was curled up in bed, reading a trashy romance novel with a fashionably clunky pair of headphones on. She had long sandy blonde hair, and she was dressed to impress in a pair of flannel cowboy print pyjamas. She had chosen to accessorize her look with an IV stand that was replenishing her depleted stocks of blood.

"Uhm…" Maka started, but before she got any further, she was on the floor and Soul had taken a knife to the face. It wasn't silver but that had to hurt.

"Jeez, Maka, how many people want to murder you?"

"If they really want to murder me, they should try harder," Maka chirped, springing up on her feet, a peering over Soul's shoulder. There's nothing like a holding a bloodied knife to give a certain panache to any outfit, even cowboy jammies. "Alright, I'm Maka, and this is my unlikely vampire ally, Soul."

"Why would you lead with that?" Soul said. His wounds were closing up before her very eyes. "She's full human." He pointed at Maka, who was reading the medical chart that was supposed to be clipped to the end of the bed.

 _Elizabeth 'Liz' Thompson, blood loss/ severe anaemia? Emergency contact: Patricia Thompson, Sister._

Liz put down the knife. "You guys are incompetent."

"Excuse you, I fought off my vampire attacker way better than you," Maka argued, hands on hips. "I didn't need a blood transfusion."

"Maybe I wanted a blood transfusion."

Maka looked at her.

"Okay, fine, he got scared by a passing car," Liz admitted. "But I was psyching myself up to shoot him."

"That wouldn't have done anything anyway," Soul pointed out, unhelpfully. He turned Liz's abandoned headphones over in his hands. They were still playing music, but Maka couldn't recognise the song.

Liz snatched her headphones back and Soul made a small, forlorn sort of sound in response.

" _Anyway,"_ Maka said. "Do you remember what he looked like? Did you see him?"

"Yeah, of course I saw him," Liz said. "You want a description?"

"Let me go borrow some paper," Soul said. "I'll be right back, I've always wanted to try this."

He darted out into the hall to, presumably pester an overworked and underappreciated nurse for some stationary supplies.

"One condition - I want in on the action."

* * *

The French toast was on Soul, and it was some of the best French toast Maka had ever had. After their chat with Liz, and Soul had fashioned a portrait that looked 'sort of like him, I guess' Maka's stomach had decided enough was enough and started gnawing at itself.

Autocannibalism is real folks, it's real and it affects thousands of Americans every day.

Anyway, Soul had said that he knew this all-night diner that had great coffee and here they were. Well here she was, surrounded by fellow midnight-breakfasters while Soul ran to the 24 hour office shop.

("Why on earth would there be a 24 hour office shop, Soul?" "Vampires, Maka.")

Apparently most of the patronage of this fine establishment were something other than human. She could see it now, see a difference in people she hadn't been able to before - an iridescent glow to their skin, like they'd rolled in highlighter, or an extra eyeball on the back of their neck darting around, drinking everything in.

Whatever, live and let those who seek vengeance live.

Bedsides, some manner of mystical magic went into these pancakes, it was good. Real good. Maka wasn't about to risk losing the pancakes for her vendetta.

Soul slid into the booth opposite her and dropped a stack of photocopied sheets beside her plate. The thud made her cutlery rattle.

"This dick stole my dog. If seen, call 555-424-2564, and ask for Kidd," Maka read around a mouthful of French Toast. "Whose number is that?"

"It's the landline at our apartment."

"You guys have a landline? I thought you'd still be on the carrier pidgeon," Maka looked sadly at her cleared plate, before looking around to see if she could get more. The waitress was leaning over the counter to hit on the cook, and who was she to interrupt a budding romance?

"We are up on all the latest of technology," Soul muttered. "Except…"

"Except what?"

"It's nothing I can't live without," Soul said, "Nevermind. Would you like more poor knights' dessert?"

Maka nodded, and hoped that 'poor knights' dessert' meant French Toast.

* * *

The next night, they spent the evening taping up the posters around town everywhere that Soul thought might be a popular hangout for a rouge vampire looking to pick up a bloodbag or two. His words, not hers.

Kidd and Liz were doing a different, much shorter circuit then they were. Maka had been ready to whine about it, but when her phone blew-up with texts from Liz that Kidd had packed a set square, a level, and a measuring tape to make sure that their flyers 'looked right', she realised she had dodged a bullet.

The last update indicated that they had just finished the first 'series' of eight flyers taped onto the storefront of a vacant retail unit, and had made a detour to purchase a pocket calculator and a notebook to diagram exactly how their other flyers should be laid out.

They'd left Soul and Kidd's apartment an hour and a half ago.

She tossed the tape dispenser from hand to hand while they walked. Soul was stuck with carrying the heavy stack of flyers, but he was the one with superhuman strength, so he had no room to complain.

As they walked they chatted, stopping every now and again to sellotape posters to a free space, or over other posters for events long since passed.

"Okay, so like - do you know the way you can't go out in the sun?"

"I am acutely aware that the sun can cause my immediate and painful death, yes."

"But you can go out at night?"

"Yes?"

"When the moon is out?"

"Yes?"

"But doesn't the moon just like, reflect the sun's light? Isn't moonlight just like? Reflected sunlight?"

"Holy shit."

* * *

There's not much they can do, other than wait for someone to call.

* * *

Maka always wanted a cool group of friends whose apartment that they all hung out at and had roof access so they could have rooftop parties.

She had that now, give or take a few supernatural elements.

A portion of the friends would burn up and die in the sun, so they couldn't all hang out and watch the sunset, or stay out all night and have a magical bonding moment as the sun broke over the horizon.

There weren't enough of them to have like a _party_ party, and even if there was, Kidd said that that would be inconsiderate to the neighbours.

So they hung out on the roof in a small group and Liz and Soul built nuanced playlists that were generally mellow but allegedly had distinct vibes and themes that were beyond Maka's feeble understanding of music.

But sometimes a fight broke out between Soul and Black Star, which Maka had been led to believe happened at parties sometimes, although she doubted that the combatants turned into wolves and sort of bats at regular parties. She also doubted that sometimes the disposable red solo cups had an extremely bloody Mary in it at regular parties.

And sometimes Free's tiny girlfriend Eruka would solve complicated linear equations in coloured chalk on the paving slabs and get mad when someone smudged it, and then have to hold back her immortal boyfriend before he ripped off someone's head. Maka had seen something similar happen on the dance floor at clubs when she was out.

Other times, there would be a quiet vacuum of werewolf shaped space because Free and Black Star had to go chain themselves up in an undisclosed location because it was a full moon and they didn't want to kill anyone.

Sometimes, Liz would talk softly to her sister on the phone while Kidd braided her hair.

But still, sometimes they got drunk, the kind of sleepy drunk where you point at the stars and argue about the constellations, and lay out on blankets arguing until the first light started to stain the night sky and the vampires had to sprint for cover.

* * *

There was having an idea. And then there was the careful planning of the idea. And then there was being vaguely incompetent so you have to call your friend to help you.

Soul was kind of a freak about music, and he was a freak who was incredibly lucky that vinyl was considered hip enough that his favourite modern indie artists were all releasing vinyl copies of his favourite albums, and also that you could dial in an order to the local record store and they would deliver if you paid them enough.

And she had a hunch that Soul wasn't into vinyl because because it was a 'purer sound' or whatever people who are into that say. He used a gramophone with a hand crank for christssakes. He was about eighteen sets behind on musical technology and Maka was going to drag him into the future suddenly and mercilessly.

Well. Not the future. Somewhere around 2009.

What? Maka wasn't going to buy him an MP3 player when she had a perfectly good one lying around, somewhere. In its box. Never opened.

It was a gift, okay? A gift from her useless Papa, who somehow thought that she would use a pink sparkly MP3 with the words 'Daddy's Little Girl' engraved on it in flowery script.

Especially when she already had a perfectly serviceable one that wasn't embarrassing to take out in public. Well, she had. It was 8 years ago, okay? It broke a couple of years ago when she dropped it.

And then she had an iPhone now, so she just, it was around somewhere, that's the point. So while she was looking for that, she called Liz, who for some reason was already in Soul's apartment.

Maka could hear the familiar sound of the gramophone in the background.

"I need your help," Maka said, before she even said 'hi'.

"Who the fuck are you?" Liz said, irritably.

"It's Maka."

"I'm kidding, I have caller ID."

Maka suspected she wasn't kidding.

"Anyway, waddya want?" Maka could hear - oh god, was that bedsprings. Holy fuck. This was big.

"Whossat?"

"Go the fuck to sleep," Liz said to the voice that was definitely Kidd, whose bed she was definitely in. Maybe for sex reasons. Maybe they were just platonically sleeping in the same bed. "I'm _on the phone."_

"I need some music help," Maka asked, trying to keep her cool.

"Why don't you ask Soul?"

"Well, I can't, it's like - I'm getting him a present."

"I have to do everything for you guys," Maka could hear the mournful noise that Kidd made as Liz got up. "I'll be there in ten."

* * *

They were at the diner again, and Maka had a stack of French toast that she ignored in favour of shoving a hastily wrapped box at Soul. Only the fact that his vampirism augmented his reflexes saved his coffee.

"What's this?" Soul shook the box like a little kid in the run up to Christmas. "I didn't get you anything."

Maka didn't point out the fact that she expected he would pay for the French toast. Instead, she said:

"You didn't have to, it's a thank you gift, you know, for everything you've done."

"I can't accept this."

"Sorry, I have a no return policy - anyway you haven't even opened it," Maka pulled her stack of French toast back to her. It wasn't getting any warmer, and they could go back and forth about gift etiquette for a while. "Go on."

Like a little kid who'd finally gotten to Christmas, Soul's curiosity got the better of him, and he ripped the package open. Shredded it, really. Maka was worried about the contents, for a second.

He held the clunky headphones and pink mp3 player reverently. It was filled with albums and songs carefully curated by Liz because they had both agreed that Soul was in no way ready to make the leap to downloading his own music.

"Is this really for me?" Soul squinted at the engraving on the back, puzzled.

"Yeah. Who else would it be for?" Maka said, then made an executive decision to fudge the truth a little. "I had to get it second hand, though."

"Oh," Soul nodded, slipping the head phones over his ears. "How do I make the music play?"

Maka carefully explained how to use it, between bites of French toast, making sure to tell him the many ways in with such a device could be broken.

* * *

"I don't know who the fuck put these posters up, but I didn't steal your fucking dog." Kidd held out the phone to the room. It wasn't on loudspeaker, but they were all straining to hear it. It was the first call they'd gotten, and Maka froze at the familiar gruff voice.

Everyone frantically looked at each other, all of them making desperate gestures to indicate that they most certainly did not want to talk to him. Maka was frozen, she couldn't move, her throat was dry and her voice was gone and somehow she'd gone from standing on her own two feet to leaning heavily on Soul. He put his arm around her waist, stopping her from, from what? Collapsing? Running away?

"Oh, for the love of god," Liz took the phone, and clicked on the loudspeaker. "Listen, on behalf of humans everywhere, I'm trying to organize a death match between you and whatever friends who are willing to die for you or whatever and an interested party. You're a hard man to get ahold of, you know."

"What do I get if I win?"

"Bragging rights? Whatever mystical benefits and supernatural kudos killing a medley group of beings gets you? Listen, are you in or not?"

"Sure, why not?"

As Liz turned to finalize the details of the fight to the death, Maka had one terrible realization. How in God's name was she supposed to kill a rogue vampire and enact her revenge if even the sound of his voice made her fold in on herself like some kind of Makagami?

* * *

Liz was leaning over a calendar, muttering furiously to herself. She had not disclosed the details of the phonecall with them, but Maka suspected that she'd been on loudspeaker the entire time. Maka had been preoccupied by her trauma. She should've just gone to like, a therapist or something. A vengeance quest was not a coping mechanism sanctioned by the American Psychiatric Association.

"What the fuck? Is this last year's calendar?" Liz flipped to the front. "1985. Perfect. Someone get me a calendar for this year."

Anyway, this was a terrible idea and she should probably stop it before it went too far and holy shit it was already too far, she was past the point of no return. She had passed the point of no return and she just had to go through with it. She just had to stake a vampire through the heart- wait, was that even how you killed a vampire? How do you kill a vampire?

"Soul, how do I kill him?" Maka said quietly, which meant nothing in a room full people with supernatural hearing. "Like seriously, do I have to stake him through the heart with a number two pencil or what?"

"No. Why do you think a pencil would - oh. Wood." Realisation dawned, then was replaced with disdain. "No, you use silver to kill vampires."

Maka remembered working her mother's ring off her finger the morning after the attack. She hadn't worn it since then, but maybe she should've been wearing it. To protect herself from the undead.

Black Star squawked in the background.

"What do you mean that's a full moon?" Liz screeched.

* * *

They reconvened a day later, having scouted the city of silver things of a weapony nature. So far, they did not appear to be very successful.

Soul was holding a silver teapot, defending himself from the silver burn by wearing a set of enormous and unwieldy oven mitts designed to look like animal heads. The right one was a purple crocodile, and the left was a blue frog.

"You could hit him with it?"

Kidd had a wooden box that Maka had high hopes for - she remembered that her parents had a set of knives they got for their wedding that came in a box like that. It was at times like these she regretted living so far away from where she grew up, where her dad still lived and most importantly - where that box of fancy silver knives was.

Then Kidd opened the box and her high hopes were dashed upon the rocks of despair because-

"Those are spoons, Kidd," Maka said. " _Spoons."_

"There's eight of them," Kidd offered. "And I would think that spoons are more suited to combat than a teapot."

"What about brass knuckles?" Soul tried to change the subject, like he wasn't the one who just offered her a teapot to bludgeon her enemies to death with. "But _silver."_

"Soul, you don't know how knuckledusters work do you?"

"Getting hit in the face with brass hurts?"

"Yeah. but mostly they steady you into a tighter fist, so you just punch better," Maka explained, swinging in with a rolling punch. Soul ducked out of the way, even though she wasn't anywhere near hitting him. "Do it wrong and you'll break your fingers. And where would we even get them?"

"Did anyone else bring anything good?" Maka leant her head into her hands, because, while in theory you could only go up from _a teapot, a set of ornamental spoons, and hypothetical silver 'brass' knuckles_ , she wasn't hopeful.

"I got you this." Free was holding something wrapped carefully in a towel, probably so that he didn't have to touch whatever toxic silver thing it was.

"Thank you." When Maka unwrapped the towel, inside is a discrete parcel labelled 'overnight shipping' and Maka found it extremely touching that he would not only venture online to buy her something, but that he also wanted to make sure it got here on time. She wouldn't have said that they were close. In fact, she didn't even think that he knew her name.

Liz wordlessly handed her a knife to open the box, and inside, there was a set of silver plated grills. There's some other stuff too, like instructions and packing peanuts and a warranty.

Maka pressed her lips together in an effort not to laugh. A grill is somewhat more weapony than a teapot or spoons, and it at least looks intimidating.

"He bit you, you will bite him back," Free said, by way of explanation.

Maka was moved by the first somewhat combative item she's received and by Free's surprisingly poetic justification. Her eyes started to feel a little damp.

"Okay, alright, enough with the waterworks, since and because me'n'Free can't attend the bloodbath in person, we decided to tag team to make you look like the most baller motherfucker this side of supernatural world, so I made you this."

 _This_ was a baseball bat, wrapped in barbed wire. Tangled in the wire is a mess of silver jewellry, Maka could see lockets and pendants and friendship bracelets. It was something actually useful, and also, actually kind of terrifying.

"Those aren't silver," Kidd pointed out. "I can't feel anything."

"Me neither," Soul said. "No silver heat."

"Huh?"

"Waddya mean they aren't silver?" Black Star asks. "Of course they're silver."

"I think those are nickel?"

"Like the coins? Aren't they the same thing?"

"What?"

"Yeah, nickel and silver, aren't they the same thing?"

"No?"

"Well, if it's not silver then how come I can do this?" Black Star grabbed at a knot of jewellery hanging from the end of the bat.

"What are you trying to prove here?" Soul asked. "That it's really definitely not silver?"

"It'll just take a sec-"

"I don't know what you're doing but you can stop now," Liz said, idly filing her nails.

"Don't stop him. I want to know where he's going with this," Kidd peered at Black Star, who was grimacing a little.

"This!" Black Star shoved his hand into Soul's face. "See? It must be silver."

Maka grabbed Black Star's hand and angles it towards herself. In the centre of his palm there was an angry red rash, hives bubbling up out of scaly, itchy looking skin.

"Black Star, you have a nickel allergy," Maka said. "You need some anthisan."

"Is this why you always use chopsticks?"

"Never mind my dumb allergy - "

"Contact dermatitis can be pretty painful Black Star; you should really go to see Doctor Stein - "

He snatched his hand back. "I'd rather die of silver burns."

"I think we just agreed that's nickel."

"Do I have to do everything?" Liz muttered putting down her nail file to inspect the shape.

"You didn't bring anything!"

"I brought that!" Liz nodded at the knife she handed Maka, now abandoned in the detritus of the package opening in the table.

"Is this silver?" Maka asked, holding it up.

The manner in which the medley of supernatural creatures flinched away was answer enough.

"Where on Earth did you get that - that thing's silver all the way down?" Kidd asked, a little afraid of the answer, in Maka's opinion.

"Oh, I stole it from my boss for the weekend - it's not like he'll notice it's gone," Liz shrugged. "And if he does, he's a jerk anyway. Will it work?"

"Yeah it'll work," Soul said from halfway across the room. "Just, don't come near me."

* * *

"Hey, Lish, what did you shay hish name wash again - " Maka's speech was only slightly slurred, by the grill. It wasn't very dignified, but she still planned on trash talking.

"Huh?" Liz looked up from where she was nervously recounting the bullets - lead, not silver - in the chamber of her revolver. She spun the chamber. There was a second gun shoved into the waistband of her pants. "Oh, he said he was called Giriko. You alright there?"

"Yeah."

She rubbed her thumb against the wedding ring. It was the first time she'd worn it since she'd punched Giriko in the face with it. She hoped to continue the tradition.

They were walking a couple of feet in front Kidd and Soul, who didn't feel comfortable near Maka who was weighed down with silver. Liz hadn't been planning on coming, but since she knew how to shoot a gun and make a shiv out of a spoon… in her own words; they were hopeless without her.

She wasn't going near anyone though, she was going to stay comfortably behind everyone and try not to shoot them by accident. Liz had been very offended at the very idea that she might. She was an excellent shot, apparently.

The spoons clinked on her belt as she walked.

They'd left the teapot at home, much to Soul's annoyance.

"It's just up here on the left," Liz called back to the others. "Get over yourselves and stand next to us for a while."

Kidd and Soul joined them gingerly. They looked up at the warehouse.

"Maka?"

"Yeah, Shoul?"

"I just wanna say, when we met, that I had no intention of ever dying for you, but here we are I guess," Soul shrugged. "Everyone's gotta die for something, even the immortal undead, I guess."

"We aren't going to die," Maka swatted at him, and he flinched away from the silver. "We're going to kick hish assh."

"For the love of god, Maka, if you are going to insult him, please avoid 's' sounds."

"Don't tell me what to do."

"Should I knock?" Kidd asked. "Is there a bell?"

"What? No! Just, just open it," Liz said, nodding him forward as she stepped back, gun drawn.

"I don't want to go first," Kidd said. "What if it's a trap?"

"It's probably a trap," Soul agreed. "We should just go home."

"Do you know how much organizing this took?"

"Okay, alright! I'll go firsht," Maka offered. "Everyone be cool."

Now this was an abandoned warehouse with a leaky roof and pools of stagnant water and a crumbling ceiling and the flickering electrical fixtures and the whole thing looked slated to collapse at any minute.

It was exactly where a fight to the death should go down.

A fight to someone else's death, hopefully, but everyone had to go sometime.

And standing right in the middle in a very well placed circle of dramatic light, was Giriko, the guy who'd drank her and Liz's blood like it was free to the general population. Maka squinted at him.

There was a angry pink scar across his cheek, gray around the edges. Maka glanced down at her hand. Did she do that?

"Yo - hey, hey, wait a minute. You're the fucking bitch that did this to me," he jerked his chin up to that his face caught the light better.

 _She did that._

"Yeah, I fucking did, and I'm about to do worshe!"

"I told you about the 's's, Maka, I told you."

Giriko tipped back his head and laughed, the sound echoing awfully in the cavernous space.

"Bitch, you and your pack of pansy-ass excuses for vampires are dying tonight," Giriko stretched idly, warming up for the battle to the death. "And as far as I'm concerned, I'll be doing the world a favour. You fucks are an embarrassment to our kind."

Beside her, Kidd and Soul did their very best to look intimidating. Soul just put on his half-bat face, which was scary like Teen Wolf is scary, and Kidd attempted to achieve this by partially dissolving himself into the shadows, which had the terrifying effect of making him look like a half melted emo snowman.

"Let'sh go mothershucker," Maka hurtled a spoon (shpoon) at Giriko to distract him before sprinting for him.

"Oh, fuck we're going? I guess we're going -" Soul started running. Kidd turned into a completely melted emo snowman and whooshed towards Giriko, like a terminal velocity bottle of spilled ink.

The spoon missed completely.

Like, he didn't even have to sidestep in a too-cool casual way. It missed. By a lot.

Whatever, it was a distraction anyway, and he had been distracted. Slightly.

Maka swung in, her fist moving through the air, and then his fist was in her gut and she was the one moving through the air, flying backwards. She hit the ground and skidded, before throwing up. It splattered on the grounds, and suddenly she never wanted to eat anything ever again.

"Maka!"

She had no idea that vampires- that _Soul and Kidd_ were so strong.

Well, she realized, looking up, maybe they weren't so strong.

Giriko was pulling through the shadowy tendrils Kidd was trying use to hold him still, and Soul was looking over at her, not punching anyone, and grappling feebly with an arm. She gave him a thumbs up. Liz had her gun trained on Giriko, but they all knew that bullets would only slow him down. Or make him angry.

They'd find out when they shot him.

Either way, they wouldn't kill him.

Only silver would do that.

Maka got up, abandoning the puddle of vomit she felt really like lying in, and ran back into the fray. She pounced on Giriko's back, hooking her legs around his waist, and sinking her silver teeth into the tendons between the shoulder and the neck and holding tight.

Maka's mouth filled with smoke and she couldn't breathe properly, but she held on for dear life while Giriko _screamed,_ wailing in pain while the silver ate through his flesh. His hands pulled at her forearms, his nails raking through her flesh, drawing blood before he grasped them firmly and flipped her off his back.

She felt something tear, and it wasn't her.

She slammed into the ground, and the air left her lungs suddenly, but before Giriko could do anything - "I'll kill you bitch, I'll fucking kill you!" - he was knocked back a step, taken aback by Liz nailing him in the chest with a clean shot.

Maka rolled over and spat out the charred lump of vampire flesh, which crumbled to ash. The inside of her mouth tasted like charcoal. She coughed, spitting again, and pushed herself up to her feet.

The heavy, dark shadows bound Giriko tightly while Soul punched him, yelling as he broke his hand against Giriko's jaw and wedged it into his armpit, and gritting his teeth against the pain of his bones snapping back into place and mending themselves.

Giriko's shoulder, where Maka had ripped of a piece of his flesh with her teeth, was smoking and crumbling in on itself - "You can come back from a silver burn, but it won't be quick, and it won't be easy," Soul voice rang in her head - and his left arm was hanging limply.

He was knocked back another step when Liz shot him again, stumbling over Kidd, who was a shadowy, writhing mass that would fuel Maka's nightmares for months.

 _Liz had sex with that._

Not the time. So not the time. The time to think of that is never ever ever.

Maka threw another spoon at Giriko, which grazed Kidd's arm? Leg? Tentacle? - "Aim! Maka! Aim!" - before it embedded itself in Giriko abdomen. He doubled over briefly, before roaring and tearing himself out of Kidd's somewhat loosened grip.

Giriko grabbed the spoon and pulled it out of with his bare hands, screaming. He twisted and drove the spoon into Soul's side, ripping his hand away, because the silver burned him too. Soul crumpled, trying to yank it out with his half healed fingers. He cried out, panicking and fumbling as his fingers started to blacken.

Liz shot at Giriko again, and Kidd enshrouded him in darkness giving Maka time to scramble over to Soul and pull the sharpened spoon out, tossing it away. She tucked one hand under his shoulders, pulling him upright again.

"Are you okay-"

"My hand, Maka, my hand-"

He was crying, his face fully human. Her free hand fluttered over him, desperate to offer real comfort, but the silver on her finger meant she couldn't touch him.

"Shoul, Shoul I can't, I have to -"

She spat out the grille, tucking it into her pocket.

Maka drew the knife, glancing over to where Liz and Kidd were doing little more than distracting Giriko. He was swatting away Kidd's shadowy presence like it was inconvenient mist, and blood blooming on his tank top where Liz managed to shoot him did little more than annoy him, doing nothing to drive him back anymore.

Liz dropped her revolver, drawing a petite handgun in its stead and shooting rapidly and repeatedly at Giriko, as he advanced lowly through the hail of bullets, despite Kidd trying to hold him back.

Liz's gun clicked, and with a roar, Giriko backhanded her across the warehouse floor. The gun clattered on the floor, out of reach, even if Liz wasn't unconscious.

"Liz!" Kidd cried, turning humanoid instantly, and Giriko took advantage of the opening to seize Kidd by the throat with his good arm.

"Soul, please, we have to do this now."

Soul stood up, shakily, and smudged away the evidence of emotional distress with his good hand. Economically, he pressed his wounded hand to his injured side, and steeled himself. His game face was back.

He launched himself, jaw snapping at Giriko, pulling his free, weakened arm away from where it was about to make intimate contact with Kidd's face. He dug his heels into the ground, pulling while Kidd fought to free himself from Giriko's grasp.

Did you know there was a place on a human's back that if you stabbed, you could sever the spine and hit the heart all at once?

Maka's medical training hadn't covered that, so she made her best guess, wrapping her arm around Giriko's neck and levering the silver knife under the left shoulder blade and twisting it as much as she could. There wasn't a whole lot of wriggle room between ribs.

The effect was instantaneous, Giriko's grip loosened immediately, and he was wracked with panic, his eyes wide and fearful as he crumbled to ashes from the inside out, burning and blackening.

Kidd pushed away, twisting to sprint to Liz's side, slipping on the expended gun cartridges.

The silver knife hit the floor loudly in a rain of bullets, and Soul fell heavily to his knees, gasping for breath before Maka could catch him.

* * *

In a perfect world, they would limp home just as the sun was dawning over the horizon, to signify the hope they now had.

Of course, that wasn't the case here, because the sun would kill fifty percent of the party instantly and the fight hadn't lasted that long, but they sat on the curb outside in the dark after gathering up all the silver and bullets, and forcing Soul's fingers into the right position to heal properly, looking up at the full moon. Liz called a cab groggily, while Kid fussed over her.

"French Toast's on you tomorrow," Maka said.

"Sure," Soul slung his uninjured arm over her shoulder. "But you owe me."

* * *

 **Fin.**

* * *

 **Because I didn't want to say it at the start of the fic in case people rightfully ran away screaming, the title is from _My Immortal._**

 **Sorry-not-sorry.**

 **Please, please read and review!**


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